GOVERNMENT
OF INDIA
A Digital India Initiative
GOVERNMENT
OF INDIA
As per 2011’s census, Thane city has a population of more than 18 lakhs, which is growing steadily. In Thane, mobility is a major concern; be it going to school, college, and office or for any other purpose citizens generally rely on the public transport system to travel within the city. Thane Mahanagar Transport Undertaking (TMTU) provides bus services for the residents of the Thane city as well as its surrounding areas. About 100+ bus routes are served by TMTU’s fleet of 500+ buses. TMT plies its buses within the city and to the adjoining areas, including connectivity to the western suburbs of the Mumbai city.
The city faced multiple challenges with respect to it’s bus transportation system. These primarily included long waiting time for passengers, over-crowded buses, lack of data for available buses, etc. Due to the unavailability of readily available information related to public busses, citizens were reluctant to effectively utilize public transport, especially during the peak hours. Also, with the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, it became crucial for the city officials to manage the public buses effectively and judiciously, so that some of the buses could be used as ambulances to reduce the stress on healthcare facilities during the peak COVID-19 situation.
A few of the major problems and challenges faced in the city revolved around the below mentioned aspects:
Considering the fast growth of the city and increasing demands and expectations of citizens from the city-government, Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) envisaged to implement an Intelligent Transport System (ITS).
This system provides a facility to the city officials to easily monitor and tackle several issues using enormous amount of data generated from the ITS application. The system also allows to display information in real-time to enhance citizen’s travel experience and provide user-friendly transport services. Thane Smart City Limited (TSCL) took up this transformational to reduce time and improve travel experience for citizens. The application also helps to monitor movement details, fuel management, buses in running and idle stage, not in communication and under repair.
These aforementioned solutions have been accomplished with extensive use of data from the ITS:
The City realizes that data is an important asset to not only design better transport, but also effectively route the buses as per traffic congestion. Several key insights are drawn from the data which is analysed and channelized through the ITS daily, of which some have been mentioned below:
Below are some of the images of the various dashboards developed as part of the ITS application:
Figure 1: No of buses available for tracking
Figure 2: Vehicle movement tracking report
Figure 3: Details of vehicles on google map
Figure 4: Particular vehicle mapping portfolio
Figure 5: Route selection wise bus availability details
Figure 6: Estimated time required for Bus
Figure 7: PIS displays available at bus stops
A platform like ITS has helped citizens and TMTU as highlighted below:
The data solutions implemented through the ITS proved to be instrumental in helping city officials as well as the citizens through numerous use-cases as highlighted above. The key outcomes accomplished through this project have been enhanced passenger experience, reduced carbon footprint, better incident management, informed decision making, effective management of resources and overall improvement in Thane’s public transport.
Moving ahead, TSCL plans to install more PIS (Passenger Information System) displays to cover more bus stops in the city adding to its improved transport facility and also other allied areas.
Furthermore, TSCL plans to drive other initiatives and processes through ITS such as traffic management, monthly pass, online ticketing through mobile application etc. to further improve the public transportation in the city.